“Clean it off,” he said.
The voiders were at his feet in moments, dutifully removing the scraps of matter from Dowd’s handmade shoes.
“What does this mean?” Dowd murmured again. There was surely synchronicity in this turn of events. In a little over half a year’s time the anniversary of the Reconciliation would be upon the Imajica. Two hundred years would have passed since the Maestro Sartori had attempted, and failed, to perform the greatest act of magic known to this or any other Dominion. The plans for that ceremony had been laid here, at number 28 Gamut Street, and the mystif, among others, had been there to witness the preparations.
The ambition of those heady days had ended in tragedy, of course. Rites intended to heal the rift in the Imajica, and reconcile the Fifth Dominion with the other four, had gone disastrously awry. Many great theurgists, shamans, and theologians had been killed. Determined that such a calamity never be repeated, several of the survivors had banded together in order to cleanse the Fifth of all magical knowledge. But however much they scrubbed to erase the past, the slate could never be entirely cleansed. Traces of what had been dreamed and hoped for remained; fragments of poems to Union, written by men whose names had been systematically removed from all record. And as long as such scraps remained, the spirit of the Reconciliation would survive.
But spirit was not enough. A Maestro was needed, a magician arrogant enough to believe that he could succeed where Christos and innumerable other sorcerers, most lost to history, had failed. Though these were blissless times, Dowd didn’t discount the possibility of such a soul appearing. He still encountered in his daily life a few who looked past the empty gaud that distracted lesser minds and longed for a revelation that would burn the tinsel away, an Apocalypse that would show the Fifth the glories it yearned for in its sleep.
If a Maestro was going to appear, however, he would need to be swift. Another attempt at Reconciliation couldn’t be planned overnight, and if the next midsummer went unused, the Imajica would pass another two centuries divided: time enough for the Fifth Dominion to destroy itself out of boredom or frustration and prevent the Reconciliation from ever taking place.
Dowd perused his newly polished shoes. “Perfect,” he said. “Which is more than I can say for the rest of this wretched world.”
He crossed to the door. The voiders lingered by the body, however, bright enough to know they still had some duty to perform with it. But Dowd called them away.
“We’ll leave it here,” he said. “Who knows? It may stir a few ghosts.”
5
Two days after the predawn call from Judith—days in which the water heater in the studio had failed, leaving Gentle the option of bathing in polar waters or not at all (he chose the latter)—Klein summoned him to the house. He had good news. He’d heard of a buyer with a hunger that was not being satisfied through conventional markets, and Klein had allowed it to be known that he might be able to lay his hands on something attractive. Gentle had successfully re-created one Gauguin previously, a small picture which had gone onto the open market and been consumed without any questions being asked. Could he do it again? Gentle replied that he would make a Gauguin so fine the artist himself would have wept to see it. Klein advanced Gentle five hundred pounds to pay the rent on the studio and left him to it, remarking only that Gentle was looking a good deal better than he’d looked previously, though he smelled a good deal worse.
Gentle didn’t much care. Not bathing for two days was no great inconvenience when he only had himself for company; not shaving suited him fine when there was no woman to complain of beard burns. And he’d rediscovered the old private erotics: spit, palm, and fantasy. It sufficed. A man might get used to living this way; might get to like his gut a little ample, his armpits sweaty, his balls the same. It wasn’t until the weekend that he started to pine for some entertainment other than the sight of himself in the bathroom mirror. There hadn’t been a Friday or Saturday in the last year which hadn’t been occupied by some social gathering, where he’d mingled with Vanessa’s friends. Their numbers were still listed in his address book, just a phone call away, but he felt squeamish about making contact. However much he may have charmed them, they were her friends, not his, and they’d have inevitably sided with her in this fiasco.